OK, so we’ve definitely discussed the state of Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard’s finances before.
Many, many times.
Nobody’s trying to be nosy — not any nosier than celebrity gossip tends to be, anyway — but they’ve brought the topic up themselves a lot over the past few years.
And it literally never goes over well.
The thing is that the Duggar family has money, and everybody knows it.
They’ve had their own reality show for the past 10 years — 17 Kids and Counting debuted on TLC in September of 2008.
It eventually became 18 Kids and Counting, then 19 Kids and Counting, but it was cancelled in 2015 after Josh’s molestation scandal.
By the end of that year, however, the first episode of their spin-off, Counting On, aired.
So it’s not like they were ever “out of work” for any real length of time.
Since the whole family has been on popular reality shows for ten years (and counting, get it?), they’re reasonably well off.
Like, they have about eight private planes.
They’re doing all right.
Still, Jill and Derick have gotten into a habit of asking fans for money.
And that’s just not a good look.
Time and time again, they’ve set up GoFundMe pages, asking for donations for their mission trips.
Whenever they got criticism for it — which was every single time they did it — they always defended themselves by saying that missionaries get donations, it’s just a thing that happens.
Which is true, sure, but missionaries are rarely also TV stars.
These days, their family is pretty settled in Arkansas, so they can’t really do such easy money grabs anymore.
… Or can they?!
Alyssa Bates from Bringing Up Bates, that show that’s basically 19 Kids and Counting with a different family, posted a giveaway on her Instagram account on Friday.
The rules of the giveaway were to follow her and then tag three people in the comments.
From those entries, she’d pick 28 people to win a gift card — $ 10 gift cards to Starbucks and Chick-fil-A, and $ 10 iTunes gift cards.
As she explained in the caption on her post, this is just a way for her to “show my appreciation to you guys for your constant love and support.”
You can already see where this is headed, can’t you?
Jill actually entered the giveaway.
She was already following Alyssa, since the Bates and the Duggars are friends.
But she tagged two of her sisters, Jessa and Jinger, as well as her sister-in-law, Anna.
“Hey biz!” she added, using a nickname for Alyssa. “Super nice of you!”
And it’s all just kind of odd.
The giveaway was obviously intended for fans, as most giveaways are.
Surely the vast majority of her followers who have entered it are fans of the show who would appreciate a little treat like this.
Not, you know, people who have been famous for a decade.
Yes, she was fired from the family’s show after Derick’s super weird rants about Jazz Jennings and transgender people in general.
And sure, Derick doesn’t have a job right now, and she’s staying home with the kids while he goes to law school.
But still, the Duggars were able to afford raising 19 children.
And on top of that, they’ve likely dropped a few million dollars just on private planes.
Can Jim Bob really not throw Jill some cash if she wants some Starbucks money that bad?
It’s weird to say, but we kind of hope that Jill just doesn’t understand that this is tacky.
After all, that’s still better than her just being that broke.